God's choice

Christmas 2011
Isaiah 9: 2-7; Ps 96; Titus 2: 11-14; Luke 2: 1-20


We stood in the middle of the street and watched the fire consume the house.

My wife Diane and I spent our first four years together in Pilsen, a working-class neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side. Pilsen folks were old working-class Polish turned to working-class Latino with a small sprinkling of white-Anglo idealists. We had been happy there—Diane had grown up 25 blocks away and I was comfortable with Spanish-speaking folks. The down-to-earth sense of community and cultural richness was delightful and the challenges seemed capable of being handled.

One of the challenges was street gangs. Each block was divided up into the “turf” of its respective gangs. Reports of violence and occasional gunshots in the night were frequent. Non-combatants were almost never targeted—in fact the major danger was that frequently gunshots went wild and would go through the window of a house.

When our son was born, suddenly things did not feel like they could be handled anymore.

Earlier that year our street’s gang provoked a war with the 21st Street guys. Our kids were really kids, high school aged. The 21st Street guys were hard cases, experienced criminals in their 20’s. By late May when our son was born, they had already killed three of our street’s kids.

Two weeks later, in order to drive home the point of their dominance, the 21st Street guys torched a house across the street from our building. The flames rose high in the night, stopping trains on the elevated tracks above it.

A number of us stood in the street watching. The light from the flames played across the face of my wife and across the blanketed form of our three-week old son wrapped sleeping in her arms. I stood looking at them and vowed silently, “I’ve got to get them out of here.”

It was a natural response, understandable and responsible. It was the instinct of every parent whose very being twitches in response to a threat posed to their children.

But God made a different choice with his Son.

Isaiah wonders at it. Isaiah marvels at the strangeness of the God who chooses a radically different response to the flame and smoke of a world in crisis. The Judea of Isaiah’s time was locked in fear and betrayal, struggling under the yoke of powerful nations like the Assyrians, divided and dispirited and tasting despair. There was no one to turn to on earth, there was no hope in sight. The Kingdom of Judah seemed about to fail.

People fled. Folks seeking life and freedom and security for their children scattered to other lands. Any parent would.

But God made a different choice with his Son. He chose that moment to move into the neighborhood.

“For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
His authority shall grow continually,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.”

God made a different choice with his Son. Into this time and place of tension and terror, the promised Deliverer is born. Because God made a different choice, we can make different choices too—choices for freedom not fear, choices for unity not division, choices for hope not despair.

At Christmas, we remember how God really moved into the neighborhood.

“The Christmas story” has a lot more to do with Pilsen’s gangs and fires and poverty than pretty Sunday pageants. The census that put Mary and Joseph on the road to Bethlehem was a demonstration of Roman power and Roman greed. A census was all about gathering taxes from people who could barely afford to live as it was. Like the poor of every land, the Holy Family huddled together with other poor folk with whom they shared blood and history.

God could have chosen to be born in a place of power and influence. God could have picked a more peaceful time. But God chose to move into that neighborhood. God made a different choice with his Son.

There, in the space where guests and animals would be gathered out of the cold, the true Son of God was born. The great Emperor, whose official titles were “Savior of the World” and “Son of the Gods” and “Peace-Maker”, did not know and did not hear. His great generals and noble courtiers did not know and did not hear. Nothing happened that night in the great palace in Rome. The shepherds in the fields heard the good news, not of Caesar’s messengers boasting of Caesar’s most recent battle, but from angels from the true Court speaking of the true Peace-maker. The poor shepherds make up this new Savior’s court as they speak with one another as equals and come, the new community already forming, to the place which was Nowhere and now is the only Somewhere that there is.

For God made a different choice with his Son. Into the teeming furnace of the world, into a world of power and cruelty and greed and violence, God chooses to come with his Son. There is no fleeing to a garden of paradise, no refuge seeking security and peace. The choice of God is to move into a neighborhood filled with tension and fear and threat and the damage done by the powerful and the cold-hearted rich. On this street of broken longing hearts that have forgotten how to hope or to believe, God chooses to come with his Son.

That is why we gather tonight. That is why we sing our Glorias and our Noels and our praises in the night. That is why our hearts are lit even if we struggle with doubt and uncertainty and despair. “For the grace of God has appeared…” There are many sensible choices to be made in the world. But God made a different choice with his Son. When we turn our eyes to right or left, when we gaze into the silence of our hearts or outward into the face of those in need or in pain, there we see him. We see the hope that is unconquered, the hope born when God made a different choice with his Son.

Mary-eyes

4 Advent B 2011
2 Samuel 7:1-11,16; Psalm 89:1-4,19-26; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38


“Perhaps she saw with different eyes”

In the rear of the church nave, bathed with unfamiliar December sunlight, members of the Walsingham Cell sat speaking about the role Our Lady the God-bearer plays in their lives. The conversation had turned to this amazing moment in Mary’s story and in the Gospel of Luke, when the Archangel Gabriel suddenly appeared before this young teenaged woman with news that would shake the world.

Gabriel the great messenger of the all-powerful God was a figure of awe and fear. One of our familiar hymns speaks of him having “eyes of flame.” Whenever he appears the first thing he says is “Do not be afraid”, because terror was a common reaction to the mighty archangel’s appearance. The Qur’an speaks of Gabriel and describes him as huge.

But, suggested one of the women gathered yesterday in the quiet sunny church, “Perhaps Mary saw him with different eyes.”

Perhaps, in the solitude of that moment, when a young unknown Hebrew woman was standing in the company of that unspeakable being, perhaps she saw with different eyes, and invites us to do the same. Perhaps in that wondrous conversation, the Old Law with its codes and its sacrifices and its fear before the God of Angel-Armies ceased to be a religion of unspeakable awe and became a Way of unspeakable mercy. Perhaps the towering archangel with eyes of flame, surrounded by the throbbing murmur of cherubs and the deep darkness where God himself is hidden, became a figure of tenderness and beauty, someone that Mary found easy to trust.

And the fate of the cosmos waited upon the trust and the whispered “Yes” of a young woman. And the very presence of God on earth dimmed in the Holy of Holies in the great Temple in Jerusalem to the south, and flared invisible but bright in the body and soul of this ordinary, amazing young woman.

And so today we are to look about us with different eyes.

A teacher of mine once said that God went to a lot of trouble to empty himself fully into our flesh and our history, to truly be God-with-us. Ever since then religious people have said “Thanks but no thanks” and have tried to put God back into the temple and into high heaven where he belongs. The old faith, faith before the angel’s words and Mary’s yes, has its beauty and resonance but it was a static faith where God is predictable and our response is predictable. Perform the right rituals, behave the right way, and all will be well.

But Mary shows us how we will see with different eyes in the strange new world of the Gospel. In this new world, the poor are blessed, the mighty shall be taken down from their thrones, and what the world despised is shown to be the sacred path of God. This God will gather, not in temples made by hands, but where God’s people gather for prayer and for fellowship and to welcome the outcast and to cry out for justice and mercy. Do not look to the Holy of Holies, for the Almighty has left the building. Look to the margins, to the out-of-the-way places, to humble and broken hearts. See with different eyes, with Mary-eyes, with Gospel eyes.

Look around with different eyes, and see the newness and the glory of God.

Third Sunday of Advent, Year B

Guest homily by Malcolm Heath

 

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

Psalm 126 or Canticle 3 or Canticle 15
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
John 1:6-8, 19-28

I don’t know if you know this, but I came through those very doors for the first time about 5 years ago.  I think it was 5 years ago last Sunday, in fact.

I don’t honestly recall what led me through, only that I needed to come to church.  That sort of thing happened to me every year at Advent.  That year, 5 years ago, I listened, and as it turned out, I stayed. 

Why?  Because I was looking for something when I came in there.  I think at the time I would have called it solace, perhaps.  Or a connection with my past, since I had grown up in an Episcopal church.  There may have been other reasons too.

But the reason why I stayed, and why I still stay, is because I hear in the words of our Lection a radically different way to look at the world.  

I find it interesting that amid all that wonderful imagery if restoration and healing in Isaiah today, of celebration for fortunes and joy returned, the Prophet proclaims that this, too, is “the day of vengeance of our God”.

Can it be possible that the day of vengeance he speaks of is the very same day that the captives will be given liberty, that the oppressed will hear good news, and the

broken hearted will be healed?    

Can it be that they are one in the same thing?  That God’s Vengeance is actually the healing of the world?

That is a crazy, upside down way to look at things. 

The psalm says that when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, “we were like those who dream”.  It can seem crazy, amid all the darkness and suffering around us and in our own lives, to believe, or even hope, that some day things will be better.  It’s a crazy dream. 

It’s a crazy dream that can only be sustained with a lot of hard work.  The epistle says that we are to “test everything” and “always rejoice”.  Things eventually will be different. 

  

To me, that combination of practice and attitude, of questioning and always looking for the crazy dream, is what we’re called to do today.  We rejoice in the coming of the Lord, but we also know that it means that everything will be different, everything will be crazy and upside down.   The gospel hints at the fear that the powerful in Jesus’ time must have felt when this crazy man John, down by the river, started preaching that everything would be different soon. 

Because, let’s face it, no matter what your age, no matter how much money you have, no matter how much you don’t like where your life is right now…Change is scary.  Change is frightening. 

And God is promising change.

I didn’t realize that he was promising me change, when I walked through those doors. I didn’t know what I was getting into.  I suspect that Mary didn’t know what she was getting into either, when she said her great Yes to the angel that appeared to her.   A poor woman, nearly rejected by her bethrothed, pregnant with a child that wasn’t his,  and facing a hard life with no respite.  And yet, somehow, she took a risk, and said that she believed in change, in God’s vision of a future where things would be different – although she couldn’t imagine how. 

So, I rejoice today.  I rejoice, though, in the same spirit of wonderment and I think, fear, that Mary rejoiced with.  That crazy jump though to God’s world, where the hungry can be fed, and the heartbroken, healed.

Renewal--public conversation!

(note--on November 17 a group of parishioners, including some Vestry members, met with Canon Neysa Ellgren to talk about dreams and challenges of a renewed Saints Peter and Paul. Below are Neysa's notes from that conversation)


NOTES FROM OUR DIALOG ON RENEWAL
with Neysa Ellgren
11/17/2011


Who we are today:

Our identity includes our past and our present, with all the memories and stories, people and places, joys and sorrows, blessings and difficulties of our common life. All informs who we are now.

Some of the things included in our identity:

• Great people
• We were very fast growing in the 1980’s – with lots of kids and colorful spaces
• We are a small church
• The shape of our liturgy
• Things get started here
• Celtic renewal
• Strong outreach
• Interdenominational
• Spiritual
• Loving and welcoming
• Became a part of things right away and now have been here 56 years
• There are fewer kids here now but lots of babies
• We are welcoming to children with special needs
• Great rector and great preacher
• Modified Anglo-catholic worship style
• Musical tradition of men and boys choirs
• Music – includes chant
• Choir thin at the moment
• Great LEV relationship
• Wednesday worship is important to me
• Spiritual depth here
• It can be hard to come and enter in here
• Pastoral care is shared
• People are worn out right now
• It is difficult when core members die
• There are young people here
• There are fewer pledges now
• We have a deficit budget
• Less volunteers and those we do have are stretched thin
• We have a Spanish language service
• We are a Believe Outloud congregation
In his address at diocesan convention this year, Bishop Michael talked about the three areas most important for congregational renewal sited by Margaret Wheatly. They are identity, communication and relationship. We have talked about our identity. How about the other two?

Communication

• Can be frustrating
• Our website: we have one but it is amateurish (this was before new site was posted!)
• It can be hard to grab on to what we need to know
• Not enough verbal communication


Relationships

• Are prime in everything
• Retired clergy are part of things here and are interested in change


The culture is changing rapidly around us. Our communities are changing and our congregations reflect that. Fewer people formally join our churches. We have fewer resources at the moment – both financial and human. And yet – people are very spiritually hungry. They find spiritual identity in eclectic and inter-faith ways. Where is the Spirit of God moving us as a community right now? Where do we find spiritual nurture within this community? What is God inspiring us to be and do now for the people of God? We can count on God beside us.
Where now does God call us to follow, invest, trust and renew?

Small group Talking, Dreaming, Visioning results:

• Be homey - be who we are
• Rahab’s Sisters connections – we are all the same with the same worries, joys and etc.
• Ministry Booklet so all know what we do and how to get involved
• One of our young adults will be leading our vestry retreat using mission and ministry model from World Vision
• Increase our finances creatively
• Reserves
• Church windows computer program
• We do family stuff – be together – intergenerational
• Family-child-youth outreach: giving tree, playgroups, school supplies, food, goosehollow
• Alternative worship
• Children and youth worship
• Small groups
• Attention to space – Redo Jenkins Hall to make it beautiful and comfy
• The congregation as a stable place in the chaos of change in the world
• A thurible – prayers ascending – sweet perfume in the midst of stench
• Boiler ministry – keeping heat and warmth – boiler is fragile right now
• Bigger, Louder, Prouder
• Joyful spiritual connection – choir first
• Pubs can be spiritual places – evangelism to where people ARE
• Outside – air and light
• Joyful noise – sit up front
• Attention to the babies
• Spiritual activities, labyrinth